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Intercultural Personhood

The concept of intercultural personhood was developed by Young Yun Kim to describe a person who has experienced a fundamental psychic transformation toward an intercultural identity. Akin to the concept of world citizen, intercultural personhood describes an identity that extends beyond the limits of one's original cultural perimeters and transcends apparent cultural differences to acknowledge the interconnectedness among all peoples. The transformation is achieved through prolonged and stressful intercultural communication and adaptation experiences over time, whether through living, working, or traveling abroad or participating in multiple intercultural encounters at home. Individuals who have achieved intercultural personhood demonstrate a rich and multifaceted identity involving cultural empathy and openness toward embracing cultural and group diversity. An intercultural person is able to step into other worldviews; this ability demonstrates a complex understanding of multiple ways of knowing and being. This entry offers an overview and background of intercultural personhood, followed by an outline of the developmental process and outcomes for developing intercultural personhood. It concludes with a description of challenges, criticisms, and applications of intercultural personhood.

Background

Intercultural personhood, also termed intercultural identity, emerged from nearly three decades of research on communication, cross-cultural adaptation, and identity transformation among immigrants, sojourners, refugees, and others who have had significant intercultural experiences. The origins of intercultural personhood are rooted in Kim's doctoral work in the late 1980s on cross-cultural adaptation among Korean immigrants in the United States. This work has since expanded to include the study of cultural adaptation and identity transformation in many cultures, ethnicities, cocultures, and across a great diversity of intercultural encounters. The progression of intercultural personhood was mapped primarily through the analysis of anecdotes, testimonials, biographies, letters, diaries, and television and radio programs from the real-life experiences of people who have developed an intercultural personhood. Social scientific evidence of intercultural identity transformation was also drawn from studies of adaptation and identity transformation among sojourners and immigrants in North America, Australia, and countries in Europe and Asia.

Intercultural personhood embraces the notion that identity development is not necessarily an additive process but can be a transformative, synergetic process that stretches identity beyond the composite of individual cultural traits. Although conceptually similar, the term intercultural personhood or intercultural identity is preferred over terms such as bicultural, multicultural, biracial, multiracial, and so forth, because it places emphasis on the culture-general, rather than culture-specific, nature of the concept. It is considered culture-general because the idea of intercultural personhood is not tied down to one specific cultural way of being, nor is it specific to one group, place, time, or communication pattern. Intercultural personhood does not imply any specific cultural attributes. Rather, it depicts personal characteristics that transcend any given cultural group.

Developmental Process

Intercultural personhood entails a person's ability to continually adapt to strange environments and situations and increase complexity in identity such that over time, it transcends the boundaries of one cultural or group identity and evolves into an intercultural identity or intercultural personhood. In this process, the self is stretched and challenged to discover new ways of communicating, new ways of understanding, and new ways of being. Intercultural personhood develops in stages as individuals gain skills, knowledge, and motivation to integrate new concepts, attitudes, and behaviors into their lives. It is an active rather than passive construction of self wherein the old identity is never completely erased but is transformed. Two theories underpin the conceptual development and process of intercultural personhood.

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